


the gates of judgement

by GayLittleEarring



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, LitRPG elements, arcane ascension au/fusion/crossover (never know which is which), killing monsters for fun and profit, ooc katashi for plot reasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27859666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GayLittleEarring/pseuds/GayLittleEarring
Summary: Nile Freeman will be the first in her family to pass her judgement and gain an attunement mark. She has been training for this for ten years, killing fake monsters in her backyard and playing puzzle games until she could do them in her sleep. She did not prepare for a group of four immortals to take her under their wing.Andy has already climbed five towers in search of the goddess, Selys, said to grant wishes to those who can find her. All she wants is to ask for her Quỳnh back. The last thing she expects is to pick up a stray.
Relationships: Nile Freeman & Everyone
Comments: 11
Kudos: 27





	the gates of judgement

**Author's Note:**

> this is a crossover/au/fusion between the old guard and arcane ascension by andrew rowe (dont know which is which, the point is: it's set in the universe of arcane ascension, with characters and plot beats from the old guard) if you have never heard of arcane ascension: that is okay! my friend lukas read this for me to ensure that it was comprehensible even without prior knowledge of aa.
> 
> on the off chance you HAVE read aa, some disclaimers:  
> 1\. i am ignoring geographical locations for ease of plot  
> 2\. Lars has an inn now, it's fine  
> 3\. i cannot be held accountable for any mistakes i make to do with the universe and the pantheon: that shit is confusing as hell and the wikia is NO help (i also haven't read all of andrew's books yet, so.)

_Labrys, water bottle, snacks, pouch for gemstones… pouch for gemstones?_

“Have you seen the gemstone pouch?” Booker looks up from his own bag. 

“You’re the one in charge of gems, boss.”

“Nicky!”

“Yeah?”

“You got the pouch?”

Andy hears the rustle of fabric, and then Joe’s voice. Nicky’s in the doorway of their rooms a second later, holding up the pouch.

“Grazie, Nicky.” Andy blows him a kiss as she catches the pouch. As an aside to Booker, she says, “Should we get a larger one? I feel like it was a bit small last time.”

Booker sizes up the pouch. “We can always just leave the ones we can’t carry in the tower.”

“Wasteful!” Joe says from the other room. “You know those disappear as soon as we leave the room right?”

Andy notices that Booker’s ears are tinged pink as he chucks a balled up sock at Joe’s face, who ducks back from the doorway.

“You didn’t know that?” Andy says, surprised.

“Aww, don’t tease the baby, boss. He’s only been doing this for 200 years. He practically had his judgement yesterday!”

“Je te déteste, Yusuf.” 

“Il dit quoi?” Joe replies, with twinkling eyes. Andy smirks as she zips up her bag.

“Seeing as you’re not too busy to fuck around, I suppose I can assume you’re done?” 

They both scramble back to packing. It takes them five more minutes of running around, picking up this and that from each other’s rooms, before they’re trudging down the stairs of Lars’ inn. 

“Brave adventurers!” The man says from the bar. “Any food before you leave? Any weapons or equipment you need?” He gestures to the door that connects the inn to his shop. “We can do a bundle sale for you.”

Andy ignores him as she pushes her way out the door, Booker and Joe following suit. 

“No thank you, Lars,” Nicky says, because he’s Nicky. “We’ll be back soon. Please don’t sell our belongings, we paid for those rooms until next month.”

With that he’s next to them, blinking up at the serpent spire glinting in the early morning sunlight.

“Up and up?” Joe mumbles.

“Up and up and up,” Andy confirms.

—

Nile Freeman will be the first in her family to pass her judgement and get an attunement mark. Nile knows this, because it has been her future for 10 years. Give or take a few months. 

Nile knows this, too, because if she doesn’t she will die like her father did. Foolishly, unnecessarily, at the hands of her goddess. 

“Nile,” her mother says, hand running through her braids. “You’re prepared. You can do this.”

“Will you be here when I get back?”

“Right in the village, lovie.” 

Nile nods. She knows where, didn’t have to ask in the first place, but being nervous makes her chatty. 

The queue in front of her is dwindling down to just a few people. She can feel her heart beating a frustrating pitter-patter against her ribs, beneath her tough leather armour. 

“Mom?” She says, urgently now, as the boys in front of her (and why is it always boys? Can’t these noble houses send their daughters?) enter the spire one by one. “I love you.”

Nile’s mom smiles at her, and reaches on her tiptoes to kiss Nile’s forehead. “I love you, Nile. Go now!”

And then she’s being pushed towards the men at the entrance. They take her bag and search it thoroughly, then it’s pushed back into her hands and she’s beckoned to the entrance.

“Do I… Do I have to do anything?”

The man looks at her strangely and shakes his head. 

“Just stand there, miss. It’ll be over in a right second.”

She barely hears his final words as the transportation spell takes effect, making her stomach drop and twist as if she’s falling from an immeasurable height.

 _Shit_ , she thinks to herself, _Selys has thrown me off the serpent spire._

Of course then she’s on her knees, coughing, safely inside the tower. Or at least, as safe as one can be inside a tower of the goddess.

She rolls over on her back, breathing hard until she feels like a human being again. There’s a skylight in this room, sunlight streaming in, warming her face, but it doesn’t look like any sunlight she’s seen before. 

The alien quality of that surprises her. Not the fact that Nile maybe isn’t in the village anymore, she knows the rooms of the spire are ever-changing and unpredictable, but the fact that she would recognise when the sun is not _her_ sun. 

She lies there, basking, just a moment longer. When she looks around at where she’s been dropped, she frowns deeply. The room is large enough, stone walls and floor, and in every corner is a pile of _stuff_.

Things, seemingly without rhyme or reason. From her vantage point in the middle of the room, she can make out piles of clothes and kitchen ware, dead plants and various broken mirrors. It’s like nothing she’s read about in all the preparatory studying she did to pass her judgement.

“What the fuck?” Nile mumbles to herself. “Selys, I know you erase people’s memories after their judgement, but no one ever told me you were incomprehensible.”

Carefully she scoots closer to one of the piles, hand on her dueling cane just in case. With the tip of her boot she disturbs one of the piles, quickly retracting her foot as the integrity of the pile falls away and everything tumbles. 

Nothing happens. A book that landed at her feet lays splayed on the ground, and she has the urge to pick it up. She’s about to do so, too, when she realises that could very well be a trap. 

If everything here seems innocent, at least one thing has to be un-innocent, she theorises. And if this is the serpent spire, and Selys’ work, then maybe these are offerings previous judgement-takers or climbers have made to vie for their safety.

That seems fair enough, so she takes stock of what she has to give.

Her dueling cane is out of the question of course, even if she thinks that giving up something important could help her win Selys’ favour, and ease in the coming tests. She’d also preferably keep her armour, even if it’s only leather. 

She takes another look at the piles. Most of what she can see is clothing, some of it threadbare and cheap-looking, other pieces dyed a rich purple or studded with jewels.

She nudges one of the broken mirrors and looks at herself. She’s wearing some jewellery herself, nothing like the apparent nobility passing through here left behind, but perhaps still better than cloth. 

She takes out her earrings, weighing them in her hand. They’re small, the gold paint flaking off in places. They’ll have to do, anyway.

She looks around for a place to put them. They’re so small that she feels silly just putting them on top of a pile, sure that they’ll seem insignificant. In the end she realises has no better option, and carefully drops them on top of someone’s bag. 

Again, nothing happens, and Nile sits back on her heels with a huff. She’s climbing back to her feet when her gaze catches on the book lying spine up at her feet.

It _could_ still be a trap. But it probably isn’t.

She stands there, going back and forth on her options. With a grumble of uncertainty and indecision, she unclasps her necklace with the sword pendant, hoping that a piece that signifies her worship of Selys will appease the goddess. With her dueling cane in one hand, she drops the necklace next to her earrings, and picks up the book. 

It’s as anticlimactic as everything else has been so far. Not that Nile _wants_ to get killed, but the anticipation might get her before any monster can. 

The pages of the book are blank. She’s not sure what she was expecting, but this suits her just fine. If only she can find a pen (and get through her judgement alive) she might be the first person to have a written account of her judgement, maybe ever. 

She gets on her knees and digs through the pile of rubbish, careful not to cut herself on anything. In the end she finds a blue ballpoint pen rattling around in a bright red vase. 

She considers whether she should leave one more offering, to even out what she took and her supposed entrance fee. Then she decides that this room is truly nothing more than a room full of rubbish, and makes her way to the door with the red crystal handle, ready to move forward.

—

The four of them are making their way slowly through the cave entrance into the serpent spire. They move at a snail’s pace, chatting comfortably about this and that, speculating on what monsters Selys and the guardian of this spire will provide them.

“This is Tenjin’s domain, right?” Booker asks, the visage’s name still hesitant on his tongue.

“The visage of this spire is Tenjin, yes, but it’s the god-beast Seiryu that we have to watch out for.” Nicky confirms.

“Nah, Seiryu’s nice.” Andy replies. “I was there when she was born, only some ten metres long.”

“Practically tiny,” Joe mutters darkly.

“She was!”

“And when you say ‘nice’ you mean she’ll eat us quickly.” 

“She doesn’t eat people. I mean she will kill us and freeze us in a block of ice but you can’t die, Nicky.”

“I hate the cold.” 

Andy shrugs, knowing full well that this is a losing battle. They continue their walk through the tunnel, stopping to knock on the walls every so often to see if there’s a quicker way to get into one of the rooms and get this party started, when they hear a roar and a scream of anger from somewhere to their right. 

Andy stops dead in her tracks, taking off her backpack and digging through it for her notebook.

“Oh Andy, must we?” Nicky says.

“We must, Nicky dear.” 

“It’s not that I mind you giving the newbies advice, it’s that your advice is not… that.”

Andy finishes her writing while he talks and turns over the notebook to show him.

“‘This is the room of the rabbit-beast. Don’t die.’ Seems like solid advice to me.”

Booker bites his cheek to stop from laughing as Nicky shakes his head.

“I’ll add something else, just for you Nicky.”

She scribbles something else and shows him again. 

“Give me that,” he adds a few lines and closes the notebook with a snap. “You’re incorrigible.”

Andy laughs, her eyes twinkling up at Nicky.

— 

_I’m never doing this shit again,_ is the thought that flashes through Nile’s head as the teeth of the rabbit monster close around her dueling cane. _Never ever am I going to do this again._

She fires a blast of power into the monster’s throat, and it squeals as it releases her. With a manoeuvre practiced to perfection in the garden of her mother’s farm, she slices the sharp end of her cane through the monster’s chest where its heart should be. 

She releases a mighty yell with the effort of it, and finally the beast collapses. She waits a modest ten seconds—which are probably more like five—to see if the beast will get up again, and then she too falls into an undignified heap of exhaustion. 

She’s covered in blood and sweat, and spit where the monster had had her arm in it’s jaws, but she’s alive. She takes the book out of her pack, deciding that she’d better write about the rooms right after she clears them, in case her memories get wiped as soon as she leaves them.

To her surprise, when she opens the book there’s already something written on the pages. A warning about the room she’s sitting in right now, and as she watches with her eyebrows raised, more writing appears.

 _In one of the next rooms there’s a chess board_ , it says, _remember that our goddess isn’t too picky about cheating. -A_

 _Also_ , a different hand writes this message if the messy scrawl is anything to go by, y _ou are allowed to open the doors to the next rooms without necessarily stepping through them. You can decide your own destiny._

The author of that message signs off with an almost unintelligible - _N.G._

Nile sits there in wonder. If this book is giving her tips about her judgement, maybe all the objects in the first room were enchanted to help her through it… she briefly regrets leaving all the clothes on their piles, considering they might have been enchanted to be better armour than the one she’s wearing right now. She scrambles for her pen, wondering what it could possibly do to help her. 

Not much as it turns out. She scratches the tip against the rough stone floor but the ink stays firmly dried up in its little tube. She closes the book with a sigh, considering that it’s not worth writing a thank you to whatever mysterious book entity is on the other end of this, if that thank you is written in rabbit blood. 

There are three doors in this room. Each with a crystal handle in a different colour, red like the one she used to enter this room—she’s avoiding that one for sure—blue so light it looks like water, and green the colour of moss. 

She decides to try the door with the green handle first. It swings open to a dark room, so dark she can only see a few steps ahead of her. Her pulse quickens, reminding her she’s never been a fan of dark, possibly enclosed spaces. She closes it with a comforting click. The blue door shows her the room the book spoke about, a chess set in the middle of a table. There are two chairs but she can’t see anyone else in the room.

She considers the possibility that rooms are only occupied when you set foot in them. Either way, Nile decides that the room for which she got given advice is probably the best one to choose.

She takes another deep breath and steps across the threshold. 

—

Booker ends up punching his way through one of the walls. There’s really no use in trying to get to the meat of the action the safe way if you can’t die, and they’re bored of walking in the dark.

The room on the other side is populated, of course, with monsters of every variety. They’re still on one of the lower levels, so no god-beasts or god-beast offspring yet, but the statuesque—literally, stone and everything—Karvensi looks menacing enough. It’s surrounded by slimes though, and while Andy doesn’t _mind_ easy prey, she hates the way the slime sticks to her clothes.

She gets her labrys out of its case with practiced ease, the sound of Nicky’s sword sliding out of its sheath music to her ears. Booker cocks his gun.

“Booker, will you take those green and blue slimes? Nicky and Joe can handle the silver and red.”

“If only our clothing regenerated when we do,” Joe groans. He punctuates this statement by slicing clean through the red slime. It bursts apart, leaving behind some crystals and a thick layer of slime which he wipes off his face quickly.

The silver slime startles out of its resting position and makes to disappear, attention so focussed on Joe that it doesn’t notice Nicky until his sword narrowly misses it. 

Booker ends up shooting it instead.

“Hey! I had that handled!” Nicky says, frowning.

“This is quicker. Also, this means I get _that_ ,” he points at the large crystal lying in a pool of slime, “For myself.”

Nicky opens his mouth again, ready to continue arguing, but Andy tunes it out as she makes her way up to the Karvensi at the top of the platform steps.

The platform is more of a fighting arena, fine sand covering it. Andy debates taking her shoes off for this, but decides that it’s not worth the effort. As she steps up onto the platform the Karvensi shakes out its wings.

“That’s not very polite.” It says, in a tone so disapproving Andy has to stop herself from laughing.

“I’m about to kill you. I think good manners aren’t that important right now.”

The Karvensi shrugs, running a hand over its hair. It’s made of stone like everything else about the creature, but Andy knows that if nothing else, Karvensi are vain creatures.

When she started out, this was something she would have used against the Karvensi, but she’s killed so many by now that it really just seems like a waste of time.

Instead, she twirls her labrys and juts her chin out at it. 

“You ready?”

—

Nile grew up playing chess and other strategy games but never has she tried to play chess with only one king.

That, however, seems to be what Selys wants her to try. Instead of black and white pieces made out of wood or even bone as she is used to, these seem to be made of glass, and make a satisfying _clink_ when she taps them together. The sunlight in this room makes the pieces cast coloured shadows onto the board, sky blue and dark, reddish-brown. 

The dark pieces are lacking a king.

Nile clears her throat experimentally, feeling like an idiot.

“Oh, mysterious entity that resides in this book,” she mutters, and then louder she says: “What am I meant to do with this chess board?”

She waits a few seconds, counting slowly to half a minute, before opening her book again. The last message is still the one about destiny, and she chews on her bottom lip. 

Once again Nile is struck by how much she prefers certain danger and death to the tension of not knowing. The book told her that Selys doesn’t mind cheating, but in what sense is that applicable to this chess set? Can she just put the light-coloured king directly in the spot where the dark-coloured king should reside? Is she even playing light?

Or can the light pieces win this game at all? With no king to capture, brown might just be undefeatable. 

She hovers her hand above the pieces. Then, deciding that she’d rather get this over with and face whatever danger awaits her if she messes up directly, she starts moving pieces. She plays a full game, moving both colours as if they’re trying to win. 

In the end she’s able to capture the light-blue king with her brown knight. 

She’s unable to fret for too long about whether this is what Selys intended her to do, as a grinding sound accompanies the slow opening of a drawer from under the table. In it, a key the same colour as the blue pieces on the board.

Curiosity compels her to check for other drawers, and sure enough she finds the grooves for one more. It doesn’t budge even a little, but Nile knows with a strange assurance that if she were to open it, it would contain a key so dark it looks black but shines brown and red in the sunlight.

—

The Karvensi puts up quite a fight, heavy stone fists coming down from above as it leaps and uses its wings to keep up the high-ground advantage. Andy doesn’t need any advantages though, ducking and swinging her labrys as if in a dance.

She gets a hit in where it didn’t keep its sides protected, labrys cutting through and getting just a little bit stuck. With a grunt she wrenches it free, the song of a scream in her ears.

It’s not enough to kill it, of course, and she gets karma’s kiss in the form of a kick to the kidneys, more or less mirroring where the Karvensi is now holding its sides together. Andy is grateful for one thing: Karvensi don’t bleed. She’s sure they hurt, and that this one particularly is in quite a bit of pain, but she’s spared the horrific sight of watching stone bleed.

Andy rolls over on the sand, dodging the Karvensi’s other foot as it comes down where her head was only seconds prior. She gets a glimpse of her team taking out the last few slimes, Booker having joined Nicky and Joe in taking on the more difficult ones.

She doesn’t have time to muse on how he’s improving more every day, pushing herself onto her feet and using the momentum to run and jump onto the Karvensi’s shoulders. Its teeth sink down into her arm but she doesn’t loosen her grip, instead cutting off one of its wings.

The wing falls to the ground with a mighty crash, breaking into pieces as the Karvensi suddenly loses its balance and falls to its knees with Andy still attached. 

“Nicky! Sword!”

She plucks it from the air and drives the tip through the Karvensi’s throat. 

It gurgles once before stilling. Eventually it disappears like the slimes did before, and Andy loosens her grip on the sword, sitting back in the sand.

“You’re sharpening that when we get out of here.” Nicky admonishes her, pointing to the blade.

Andy gives an exhausted laugh and spits a glob of blood onto the sand next to her. She reaches over to the deep golden crystal the Karvensi left behind. 

Cracking her neck, she retrieves her weapons and slowly makes her way down to the men.

She takes her notebook out of her bag again.

“What’s the room after the chess one?”

—

There’s four choices of door in this room. A blue door, an orange one, a purple one and finally one with a handle on each side of the door. One a clearer blue, and the other a dark brown, with a lock beneath each. 

There’s only one thing that all of Nile’s carefully crafted research told her conclusively: keys earned in rooms will have more than one chance to be used. But, on the flip side of that coin, each key can be used only once. 

She rethinks her plan then, dropping the key into her pocket and getting the book out.

 _Dear young adventurer_ , A’s handwriting is somewhat more jagged than it had been before. _If you have survived so far you will be faced with a room of mirrors which you should avoid at all costs. There might be a room with water, and some levers or something. I don’t remember. Good luck! -A._

It’s the purple room with mirrors. Or rather one mirror, and she sees herself reflected as a silhouette. It doesn’t look quite as dangerous as A seems to think it is, but Nile thinks taking chances might be useless. The blue door does indeed hide a room bisected by a river so wide she doesn’t know how it could even fit within the tower. She stands at the door a long time, trying to decide if this is the room to pick.

She goes for the orange door in the end. If for nothing else, then for the fact that she can clearly see what her objective is. Also, the colour-coded tiles of the floor remind her of the game she used to play with her brother in preparation for her judgement. 

There are clear rules when it comes to colour-coded anything. She just has to figure out which tiles are here to help and which are here to hurt.

She digs in her pockets for anything that has some weight to it, coming up with a water bottle and a little knife that her mother must have slipped into the bottom of her bag. It’s too small to do any damage other than the truly life-saving damage that comes with an enemy being so close to you that the knife is your final option, but it’s heavy in her hand. 

She considers the room again.

Four colours, and stone. There seems to be a pattern to where the stone tiles are placed at least, every fourth tile being one which she assumes she can stand on safely. She’ll place her water bottle on them when she gets to them, but looking down tells her that her first tile, at least, is stone.

Each tile is just about big enough for Nile to stand on with her feet together, so balance is something that’s working against her. In front of her a green tile, blue to her left and orange to her right. Finally there’s a red that reminds her too much of freshly spilled blood to feel entirely comfortable with. 

She weighs the pocket knife in her hand again. Then she shrugs, and carefully drops it on the tile in front of her. The tile starts to glow, singing softly in a way that Nile does not find unsettling in the least, then drops away without any warning, practically evaporating before her eyes.

Nile stands dumbfounded as a new green tile slides into place where her knife disappeared. Green, it seems, equals certain death. Good to know.

She shakes herself slightly and turns to the orange tile on her right. She puts her watter bottle down on that one, and the same glowy-singy situation takes place, albeit in a different tone. Absolutely nothing happens. Nile gives it just a few seconds longer, then picks up the bottle. It’s strangely warm in her hand and she tucks away that piece of information carefully.

The blue tile seems to be the opposite of the orange, as the bottle comes back cold. 

Nile surveys the room. She’ll have to pick a path through here soon, skip hop and jump from a starting position of either blue or orange tile. The options of doors here being purple, green and yellow. She has no idea what to expect with any of them, but the path to the green door starts with orange, and she figures that’s just fine.

With her feet planted firmly on the orange tile, the stone tile she started on falls away. Whatever path she takes, the only way is forward now.

Green to her left, now, and red in front. She makes her water bottle do a little flip as it lands on the red tile. She doesn’t, however, get to see whether it lands upright. As soon as the water bottle crosses the boundary from orange into red a column of black smoke shoots straight up.

It doesn’t cross over to her own tile, but it nonetheless smells acrid and feels heavy in her nose, and Nile knows that this, too, would kill her.

It lasts a long time, the smoke gradually disappearing from the top down but taking a very long time to do so. Nile has realised, now, what it is that the orange tile does. She takes little hops and steps in place, sweating beneath her leather armour as the tile beneath her starts slowly melting the soles of her boots. She could try to jump over the green tile to her left, a blue tile awaiting her there, but this is the only water bottle she has and she’ll be damned if dehydration is what kills her in this, the playground of a kind and benevolent (thought through gritted teeth) goddess. 

Just as she’s really about to make the leap to a blessed cold tile, the cap of her water bottle peaks out of the mist. She grabs it quickly, pulling her hand back quickly as it blisters where her skin touched smoke, then leaps over green and onto blue. 

It’d be a good idea to take the step immediately onto stone, from here, but Nile is sweltering and waits until the blue tile cools her down enough that she’s shivering.

Slowly, making great care to avoid even leaning too close to a red tile, she makes her way across the room. It’s only when the room stops spinning that Nile realises the tile she’s standing on now is not, as she thought, stone. Rather, it’s a black tile that screeched as she landed on it and made the pattern of the remaining tiles in the room change.

She loses her balance briefly, and when she looks down she has one foot on the black tile, the other on red.

The pattern of harm, it seems, has changed as well. She sighs and puts her other foot on the red one as well. It’s cold, so she can check that one off already. Unfortunately determining the rest of the colours will be somewhat harder. The tiles directly next to and in front of her have all disappeared, leaving her floating on a little red square in a void of nothingness.

Still, she tries to keep her aim precise as she flings her water bottle on the blue tile closest to her. It seems okay, no mist or sudden lack of tile taking her precious water supply. She realises, too, that she can probably figure out a way to get to the closest door—yellow, now—using only red and blue tiles. 

Nile’s too tired to try and figure her way back to the green door anyway. 

She gets all the way there without much trouble, notably only losing her balance once and saving herself quickly enough that it doesn’t matter anyway. In the end there’s only one more tile in front of the door. It’s an already softly-glowing white, and Nile doesn’t take the risk of this being one final way to put her back at the start of this challenge. Her bottle lands upright, and she fights the urge to do a victory dance. Then she does the dance anyway as nothing happens other than the tile glowing ever brighter. 

She’s out the door and into the next room as soon as her fingers touch the door handle. 

She doesn’t know quite what she expected, but a small group of four sitting around a fire isn’t it. One of them’s telling a tall tale, blatantly false if one of the other men’s protests are anything to go by. 

The woman notices her first, eyes lighting up when she sees Nile standing there, still awkwardly clutching her water with both her hands.

“Oh, there you are!” She interrupts the man who had been arguing with large gestures while the other two fought to control their laughter. He falls silent too, but not without one last dirty look at his conversation partner. Then he shoots her a small smile.

“Come sit with us,” his voice is a lot softer than it just was. “we were wondering when you would join us.”

“Uh…” Nile says, in an impressive display of her vast vocabulary. Never let it be said Nile Freeman’s not concise and to the point. 

They just keep looking at her expectantly, and Nile decides that if this is another challenge, she can’t beat 4 people at once and would rather die sitting down. As they divide up their food to give some to her, Nile glances around the circle cautiously.

The man currently tearing into a piece of bread is still wearing his gloves. It’s not uncommon for those with hand-marked attunements to keep them hidden. It’s polite not to inquire after what attunement they have been given, so Nile doesn’t. Even though the question of whether he has two attunement marks or if the second glove is just for convenience burns in the back of her throat.

The only other mark she can see is a mind-mark. These are a bitch to cover, and the man’s fringe isn’t doing a great job of it. Nile can only see the edge of the mark but she can’t figure out what it might represent. She’s studied all the known marks from the Valian serpent spire, but marks from other spires still elude her for the most part.

She realises she’s staring when the soft chatter around her falls away. She coughs quickly and averts her gaze.

“Oh, stop teasing her,” the man with the hand mark(s) admonishes his companions. “I’m Nicky.”

Nile smiles at him, somewhat gratefully. 

“Nile.”

“That’s Booker,” Nicky points at the man with the mind-mark. “Andy,” directed at the woman, “and that’s Joe Al-Kaysani.”

He says the last part with such a confident sort of tenderness, that it takes Nile a second for the words to actually sink in.

“Al-Kaysani? Like the Dalenos Al-Kaysani family?” She didn’t think there were many people left with the Daleni royal family name, not after the six-year war that left Dalenos-previously-known-as-Kelridge a new part of West-Edria. 

Joe snorts. “Something like that, yeah.”

“So… what are you guys doing here?”

“We’re climbers,” Booker says, surprised. “You know, get to the top of the tower and let Selys grant you a wish-“

“I know what a climber is, Booker.”

“Then why did you ask?”

Nile squirms a bit at that. She does know what a climber is, knows it more than most. Her father’s group had come knocking at her mother’s door, only three people of the six that went into the tower. One of them was unrecognisable from the strong young man Nile had waved off only a week prior.

“Well, there’s only four of you to begin with. And you’re not wearing any armour, either, which seems like a bit of a bad move to do if you’re climbers. Is this your first climb?”

They break out in loud guffaws then, and Nile’s not really sure why but she feels peeved anyway.

“I’m just saying, if you’re climbers you don’t seem to care much about protecting yourself.”

Andy gets her laughter under control first.

“No, Nile. This isn’t our first climb.” She starts unbuttoning her shirt then, and Nile’s eyebrows raise up into her hairline. It’s only when the edge of Andy’s attunement mark is revealed that Nile understands what’s happening. Around her, Nicky has taken off his left glove too, and Booker sweeps aside his fringe so she can see his mark too.

The three of them are all sporting the same mark.

“What is that?” Nile asks.

“Immortality.” Joe says before Andy can reply.

“What?”

Joe reaches around to tap at his back, where Nile assumes his lung mark is located. “Got the same one. It’s for immortality.”

“Is this a spider spire attunement?” It’s the only logical answer Nile can think of, and even then it’s not that logical. People have spent years mapping out every possible location for the seventh and final spire, to absolutely no avail. She’s not even sure it exists at all, except that it’s the only reason these people might still be alive.

Andy shakes her head. “We haven’t found it yet. I got mine in the Hydra spire over in West-Edria. Those two,” she gestures at Nicky and Joe. “Tortoise spire. Booker got his in the tiger spire in Caelford.”

“Wait,” Nile turns back to Joe, whose eyes are already glinting with mischief. “When you said you’re _like_ the Dalenos al-Kaysanis…” she can’t finish the question, can’t wrap her mind around it.

“Yeah.” He smiles at her. “Yusuf al-Kaysani, crown prince of what used to be Kelridge until this lot took over.” He bumps his shoulder against Nicky’s. 

She can’t fathom it. Can’t reconcile the man sitting in front of her with the tragedy she grew up learning about. The man who went into his judgement as a prince, and came back out to see his city under Edrian siege. The story gets muddled from there, but all accounts agree that he was killed within the week.

“You’re _nine hundred_ years old.”

He laughs. “Alright, don’t rub it in.”

Nile looks in wonder at the rest of them. “Okay. Immortal climbers… explains the lack of body armour at least.”

“Six to a group of climbers is more of a guideline, anyway,” Booker chimes in. “No more than six, obviously, or Selys gets mad. But we’ve done solo missions.”

Nile rubs at her temples. It’s a lot to take in, all at once like this. She drains her water bottle in one go.

“What he means,” Nicky, now, “Is that we’ll keep you safe until the end of your judgement, if you like.”

She hesitates, considering it. Surely it can’t hurt to have four immortal fighters in her corner, at least until she can go home.

“Yeah, that would be nice.”

—

They let Nile take a nap while they rest, discussing the rest of their climb in hushed tones.

“Do you think we’ll find Selys here?” Selys, the goddess said to come down and bless those able to reach the top of one of her towers. Selys, the elusive bitch they’ve not found in five other towers, one of which they climbed twice. 

“Honestly, how much are you willing to bet she’ll be at the spider spire.” Booker rubs his forehead wearily.

“We haven’t found it. Five hundred years, and we haven’t found it,” Joe says. “It’s not there Booker.”

Andy averts her gaze. 

“Andy?”

“It has to be there. _She_ has to be there.” But it’s anyone’s guess which ‘she’ Andy means.

What follows is a grim sort of silence they don’t often allow themselves. Joe picks at a tear in his shirt, Nicky staring at his own wringing hands. Booker bites the inside of his cheek until it is bloody, waits for it to heal and does it again.

She can’t think about this. Andy can’t fall into this trap, not now. 

“Nile’s relying on us. We’ll get her home safe and go from there.”

If Selys isn’t here then maybe Tenjin will tell them where she is. Andy scoffs at the thought, thinking of all the other visages they’ve asked for their help, and all the other times they’ve been told that it’s not their place to divulge such knowledge.

Andy gets up and stretches with a satisfying _pop_. 

“Let’s get going. I want to get Nile home before sundown.”

She leaves Booker to gently shake Nile awake as she, Nicky and Joe take stock of their weapons. Nicky’s right that Andy shouldn’t have used his sword as a spear, and he inspects it with a little moue of displeasure. He’ll get over it.

Nile has her dueling cane which is nice to have in a fight, but Andy parts with a dagger in case Nile’s power runs low. She’d have preferred to give her a sword, but, well, she didn’t expect to pick up a stray and as such did not prepare accordingly.

“Closest exit from here?” She directs this at Booker, who’s always been best with maps. Andy’s the one who can figure out where they are in a tower in relation to other rooms, but there’s too many to keep clear in her own head.

“Two floors up, but we’ll pass through more difficult rooms than if we follow the path set out for Nile by Selys.”

“Hm.. what path is that?”

“Well, she started in the rabbit-room and from there went to the chess room,” his finger traces along Nile’s progress on his map. “Then— Nile, what room did you meet us from?”

They turn back to face her, finally seeing the way her face is one of severe judgement.

“How’d you know my progress so far? I didn’t tell you that.”

“Well—“ Nicky starts, but Nile scoffs with a little smile on her face, retrieving a leather-bound book from her backpack.

“ _Don’t die?_ Seriously? That’s the best advice you could come up with, Andy?”

Andy shrugs a single shoulder, fighting not to burst out laughing. “You took it, didn’t you?”

“Let’s just go the route you said first,” Nile says to Booker. “I’m sick of this tower.”

—

The strange immortal climbers take a look at the doors in this room, and Nile realises that only a few of them have gemstone-handles. Booker turns his map this way and that before nodding once to himself, and pointing at a door. From there, in single file, Andy enters, followed by Nicky, Joe and Nile and with Booker bringing up the rear.

Nile can feel her heart beating hard against her ribs again, unsure of what to expect now that she’s properly deviating from her intended path. 

A big fuck-off visage is what to expect, apparently. 

She resists the urge to fall to her knees in supplication, and judging by Booker’s trembling legs he’s doing the same. Andy seems unfazed.

“Where’s Tenjin?” She asks, as if this has happened before. Hysterically, Nile has to consider the possibility that it has. 

Katashi—because that’s who it has to be, all 7, wingèd, golden-armoured feet of him—sighs at the sight of them.

“Can you give it a rest, Andromache, please.”

“Where’s Selys?”

“ _Tenjin_ ,” Katashi answers pointedly, “asked me to be here. To fend you off.”

“Bad idea,” Nicky points out, gesturing between himself and Joe. “We’re only familiar with _your_ weaknesses.”

Nile shoots Booker a look out of the corner of her eye, grateful that he, at least, is also looking a little green at the way they’re addressing a literal visage of a tower. Not this tower, but still. 

Katashi rubs his forehead. Only then does he notice Nile.

“Oh, you didn’t.” He says it so plaintively, as if Andy and her ragtag band of immortals truly have been getting on his nerves for nine-hundred and then some years. “Andy.”

“Katashi. Tell me where to find Selys and I won’t have to kidnap her judgement-takers.”

“You know why I can’t do that.”

“And you know why I can’t stop.”

Nile knows visages aren’t gods, but when Katashi unsheathes his massive crystal sword, glittering in the light and casting rainbows at their feet, she understands how they are part of her goddess.

“You will regret this.” Katashi promises, giving her new friends ample opportunity to draw their own weapons. 

“I regret many things,” Andy replies archly. Then she swings her axe at Katashi.

—  
Andy’s back hits the pillar with a crack of her bones. It hurts—so much, it hurts _so much_ —but it works to distract Katashi as Joe and Nicky take him from each side. Her bones knit themselves back together in really only a few seconds, enough time for Katashi to turn to Joe as Nicky throws himself at him.

Joe dodges the wave of whatever magic it is that Visages have access to, falling to his knees and aiming his scimitar at Katashi’s legs. 

Andy takes a breath and tightens her grip on her labrys. She quickly glances over to where Booker is getting Nile closer to a door, hiding behind pillars to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.

She charges at Katashi, a wordless yell tearing itself from her throat. The unfairness of this fight, this entire situation, gives her a modicum of strength. It’s not sustainable, but it brings her close enough to bury her weapon in Katashi’s arm, in between two hinges of his golden armour.

Her heart swells as she realises that Joe’s scimitar finds a home in Katashi’s calf and Nicky’s sword in his side at the same time. Katashi roars, and with a slam of his foot against the floor, all three of them are thrown off him.

“Fuck!” He sounds more annoyed than hurt, eyes blazing at them. “Andromache, that is _enough_!”

Andy’s too out of breath to respond, but she spits at the floor in front of his feet, blood staining holy ground. 

She can see the moment Katashi realises what he has to do. She doesn’t understand it, but she sees the change in his face, the set of his jaw. With a powerful beating of his wings, Katashi makes his way over to where Booker and Nile are staring at him with wide eyes.

“No!” Andy tries to get up despite her injuries, but she’s too late. Katashi stares directly at her as Nile’s body hits the floor.

For a second it is quiet, shock paralysing them. Then the only sound to be heard in the wide chamber is the echoing of Booker emptying his clip in Katashi’s wings. 

—

Nile wakes up in increments. Slowly at first, the fuzzy awareness that accompanies being pulled back into consciousness, then more quickly as she processes the cold floor against her back, her legs, her hands. She twitches her fingers experimentally, pleased to see that the cold hasn’t made them too stiff. She squeezes her eyes shut tightly before opening them, ripping the band-aid off this nap.

It’s only when she sees the spray of blood in front of her nose that she remembers she’s not waking from a nap.

It takes a quick exhalation of breath, and then a groan, before Nile feels ready enough to face the meaning of waking from death. Death by the hand of a visage. What a fucking ordeal.

Nile gets her feet under her and stretches quickly, bones popping back into place and muscles warming. Then she carefully catalogues her body.

Her fingers find the ridges of an attunement mark on her back, in the spot where lung-marks are located. She doesn’t have to trace the edges to figure out Selys has blessed her as she has blessed the strange group of immortals.

Nile shakes her head, dropping her hand. She doesn’t know how long she’s been out for, but there’s no one waiting for her at any rate. She picks up her pack and quickly surveils the room. The dagger Andy pressed into her hand is lying in a pool of blood, and Nile figures she doesn’t want to know whose it is. Gingerly strapping it to her belt, Nile decides the only way out is through, now. 

Armed with a grimace and the knowledge that at least she won’t die if she gets trapped in this tower, Nile continues through the closest door towards the rest of her eternal life.

…And finds her killer sitting with his head in his hands.

Nile sighs, loud enough for Katashi to look up and grab for his sword.

“Don’t.” She’s really not in the mood for any of this.

“It’s you.”

“Yes, it’s me. You didn’t know I was going to survive that?”

The lack of a response is answer enough. Nile is rapidly losing her respect for the visages her goddess employs. 

“At least you look like they got you good.” She gestures at his wings, drenched in blood and looking more than a little bit worse for wear. Katashi lets out a humourless laugh.

“Booker’s shaping up to be quite the annoyance.”

“Good.”

There’s an awkward silence then, Nile still standing in the doorway as if she might go back and find another way out of the tower. Then Katashi sighs and pats the stone beside him.

“Sit with me.”

Nile very reluctantly does as she’s told.

“Did they tell you why they’re looking for Selys?”

“They wanted the boon, didn’t they?” Nile shrugs. “Same as every other climber.”

“Not really, no. They haven’t always been climbers, and they haven’t always been four. There was another one, a woman. Quỳnh.”

Katashi looks away at that, as if trying to regain his composure.

“What happened to her?”

“She got lost. I don’t know how much you know about the temples, since most people have no reason to visit them.” He didn’t pose it as a question, and Nile didn’t respond to it as one. Her knowledge of the temples didn’t go much beyond the fact that they existed, but they went without much thought in the public’s daily lives.

After all, why put yourself in danger if there wasn’t a wish-granting goddess at the end of it?

“The water temple is where they went.” Katashi continues. “Back then, people got stuck in the temples often, and they had wanted to go in and save a group who had just gone missing. They succeeded too, came back out in groups, each clutching one or two starving, soaked explorers. Having separated to take care of the victims, it took them a few days to realise Quỳnh never came back with them.”

“Why didn’t they go back?”

“They did. They searched every inch of that temple, but Quỳnh was gone. The temple seems like a finite place to look for someone, but it isn’t. Not quite so impressive as a spire, but the goddess works her magic everywhere.”

They sit in silence for a while, Nile absorbing the idea of being stuck in a place like that for…

“How long have they been looking for her?”

“Since before Booker. Five hundred years.”

Nile can’t fathom five hundred years of heartbreak and grief. Her father’s passing happened ten years ago, and it’s a wound that still hurts when it’s prodded at. 

“Why don’t you just tell them where Selys is?”

A muscle in Katashi’s jaw jumps, and Nile realises.

“You don’t even _know_?” She feels her jaw drop slightly, once again coming to terms that the visages of her pantheon are worthless. “Have you told them that?”

“No, Nile, I have not told four angry, traumatised immortals that I don’t know where Selys is.” He turns to her. “How do you think that would end for me?”

Nile scoffs. “Maybe Selys would make you immortal too.”

Katashi pulls a face. 

“Alright,” Nile starts, deciding she may as well take advantage of this opportunity to talk to someone who might know how to fix some of these problems she’s faced with. “Tell me everything you know about the water temple.”

—

It feels like it takes hours for Katashi to explain—and then re-explain, so Nile’s sure she understands—how they might be able to rescue Quỳnh. 

“So logically Booker and I would be able to find her?” Nile asks one more time, just to be certain.

“I can’t guarantee it, but logically yes. Neither of you were there when it happened, but you are linked to her by your shared attunement which should make it easier for you than any random strangers.”

“And we can’t really die, should worst come to worst.”

Katashi nods. Nile does too, just once, satisfied with the plan slowly growing in her own head. 

She stands and stretches, ready to find the others.

“Before you leave,” Katashi says. “I would like to give you something.”

Nile raises an eyebrow. Katashi gestures to a little bowl of water that Nile hadn’t noticed sitting on a plinth out of the same stone as the walls. Maybe he conjured it right now, but Nile’s going to pretend he didn’t. She’s sick of magic.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” 

“Put your hand in, deep as you can go. Then pull out what’s at the bottom, I don’t know what you’ll get but… it feels important.”

Nile peers into the bowl. It’s shallow, and there’s nothing at all at the bottom, but she does as she’s told.

Her sleeve gets soaked all the way up to her shoulder, and she’s sick and tired of magic. She curls her fingers around the object at the bottom and tugs.

It’s a sword, shorter than the one Nicky was carrying but still about the size of her arm. It has the slightest curve to it, and it isn’t nearly as broad as other swords she’s seen before. If anything, it’s closer to a dueling cane than a non-magical weapon.

Katashi nods as if that confirms something.

“Quỳnh’s sword?” She asks, and he nods again. Katashi was right about one thing; it feels important. Holding this sword, she feels the power of its previous owner almost vibrating through it. It’s old, older even than prince Yusuf Al-Kaysani, and Nile knows she’s going to protect this sword with her life until she doesn’t have to anymore.

“Thank you.” Nile’s not sure whether she’s thanking Katashi, Selys or the tower itself, eyes still trained on the sword in her hand. “I’ll keep it safe.”

Clipping the sword to her belt, she looks around for an exit. Katashi points behind her, and Nile laughs.

“Of course,” she mumbles to herself, already swinging her bag in front of her for ease of searching its contents.

Her fingers close around the key from the chess room, and the door sings as if it wants her to open it. She throws one last look over her shoulder, to see Katashi looking at her fondly. She tries to find the words to say _goodbye_ , and _thank you_ , and _don’t ever kill anyone again without knowing they’ll wake up after_ , but in the end she just smiles and slides the key into the lock.

—

It’s been a quiet journey further into the tower. Andy doesn’t know why they’re still here, and knows that she’s the reason. She knows they’d turn around and follow her out if she gave the word, but she can’t make herself.

It’s cathartic, sure, killing monsters to work off some of the anger—at herself, at Katashi, at Selys—but that only works the first few times, and now they’re just tired.

“We shouldn’t have brought her along, boss.”

“You think I don’t know that?” She can’t even bring herself to snap at Booker. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Someone squeezes the back of her neck. Big hands, rough. She holds onto Nicky’s wrist, keeping his hand in place.

“I don’t know what to do.” It sits in the open, that admission of inability, of giving up. She’s not talking about the tower, or not _just_ about the tower. “Five hundred years, and for what? Where have we gotten?”

She buries her face in her hands, knees pulled up to her chest, making herself small like a child. They sit like that for a while, Nicky’s hand a reassuring weight, Booker to her other side. Joe pacing with nervous energy.

“What are we going to do?”

Andy’s voice is small and broken when she speaks next. “I can’t make that decision anymore.” 

No one knows how to respond to that.

“Well, that sucks.” 

No one but Nile Freeman. 

Andy’s head snaps up, staring at the impossible girl in front of her.

“Nile!” It’s Joe who reacts first, rushing to her side, hands hovering like he’s waiting for permission to check her over.

Nile takes them in her own, smiling at him. “I’m okay.”

“Are you…” Booker never sounds quite so uncertain as right now. Nile nods at him, reaching around to touch her back.

“Lung mark.” Joe’s fingers meet hers on top of her shirt, reverent. “Like me,” he says, and sounds like himself again, cheeky and joyful. “Finally I’ll be able to talk with someone who understands!”

“Understands what, the difficulties of being a chatterbox?” 

“We wouldn’t expect you to understand, Booker.” Nile says, to Joe’s great delight.

Andy lets out a great shuddering breath. Her eyes feel warm and wet, but her relief is a palpable thing. Nile, kind and strong and _immortal_ Nile, moves to her side. Booker makes room for her to sit between them, thigh to thigh.

“I have something for you.” She unclasps something from her belt, and Andy can’t believe she didn’t notice it earlier. 

“Oh.” Her hands hover above Quỳnh’s sword, unable to touch it for fear of it disintegrating like so many bad dreams in her hands. “Nile… where did you get this?”

“Katashi and I had a little chat.” She shrugs. “I think I can help you get her back.”

The words need a second to sink in. Andy can’t tear her eyes away from the sword, the impossible sword being held by the impossible girl. 

“I trust you.” Andy says, and realises to her great shock that she means it. She looks up at Nile. “Tell me the plan.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! writing is a bit like pulling teeth for me so thank you, for real, if you've made it this far. i'm on tumblr @marwankenzarisgaylittleearring!


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